How To Motivate Your Clients (Or Colleagues, Or Staff, Or Boss)
In our sales training programs, we spend a great deal of time teaching our students how to detect and respond to specific motivation patterns that are known in NLP as “meta programs”. These little beauties are like a set of directions for the way we engage in the behaviour that we do, the way we make the choices that we do. And of course the choice to buy or not buy is one which is crucial to the success or otherwise of the sales professional, so one thing every sales professional must make it his/her business to know, are the meta programs.Although all the meta programs are dead simple to grasp, we like to start with the “away from/towards” meta program because it’s just so darned obvious, and often it’s also the “clincher”!Away From/Towards Meta ProgramPeople who are motivated “away from” have their attention on the thing they wish to avoid. They make progress by moving away from problems, painful feelings, or situations of disadvantage. These people often plan well for contingencies!People who are motivated “toward” have their attention on the benefit, gain or advantage of the thing they wish to acquire. Whilst they tend to be goal driven and are unlikely to procrastinate, they may not see the pitfalls along the way!These are the extremes of “away from” and “toward”, and most of us are somewhere in between.Case StudyMad

How Can I Get Free Money To Start My Own Business
So you want to launch your very own business or product but you don't have the funds to get you started. That can be a major problem. In order to make your business venture become a reality, you will need to have financing in place in order to develop, manufacture, launch and market your business.Now you must ask yourself the all important question:How Can I Get Free Money To Start My Own Business?Well, It's easier than you might think, but first let’s entertain some options.1. You can use your own personal savings. That's assuming that you've managed to sock away a huge amount of money and you've got nothing better to do with it but some how I doubt that is going to be the case.2. You can always beg, borrow or steal (just kidding) from friends or family members. This option might work for you if you only require a very small loan, However, most business start ups require a much larger amount of money, the kind of money that friends and family simply don't have available, let alone be willing to lend it to you.3. A more obvious solution would be to take out a bank loan. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong! You’ll need to come up with an extensive business not to mention a multitude of solid reasons why your business is worth investing in and prove that you will be able to pay back the loan in a reasonable amount of time.4.If you have several cre

Make Your Referrals Count
Just because we receive a referral, it doesn’t mean that the sale is ours and the deal is closed even before we make contact.For all you know, the person being referred to you may have also been referred to someone else, so don’t take your referrals for granted.Treat your referral as though it is someone that you have never heard of before, make believe you were cold calling and came across this name on your list, and when you called them, they showed interest in your product.Now, you would never treat your very own hard earned customer with anything but the best customer service, would you?Of course you wouldn’t, you found this customer on your own through hard work and you want to keep them.Think of your referral in the same light.Far to many times I have seen referrals that have been given to people that just let them sit around for days. The assumption is, I believe, that because this customer was referred to them, that it is a done deal and they can take their time with it. This is not the case.The minute you get a referral, you should be calling that customer, the simple fact that you believe a referral to be a done deal, should be all the reason in the world to call them immediately.The customers point of view . . .If a customer is looking for a particular product or service, and they put the word out on the street, they

Automating Your Help Desk Workflow
Do you know you can open, answer, close and report help desk information without human intervention?Automation is a powerful feature provided by most enterprise level help desk products; however, most organizations rarely take advantage of these features. Based on a survey conducted by RightStar Systems, only 5% of the help desk managers interviewed were using automation to its fullest capacity. Most use it to some degree while others do not use it at all. Tom Jud, Emerging Growth Manager for BMC Software, has observed “…that the Business Rules Engine provided by the Magic Help Desk product, is the key feature that organizations should leverage to drive support efficiency and cost savings.” He explains that the two main reasons for organizations not deploying workflow automation are 1) the perceived level of difficulty in implementing these functions and 2) The lack of workflow planning used in developing the helpdesk program. Once organizations learn the importance of workflow automation and the benefit gained, they embrace the feature and drive added value from their help desk product.After having conducted over 600 site visits and product demonstrations, I have identified 4-main focus areas where organizations can benefit from deploying workflow automation.• Enforcing best practices through automation.Companies looking to provided better and less expensive

Learn to Anticipate Your Customer's Needs
This morning I was having breakfast with my good friend Diane at one of my favorite breakfast nooks. I enjoy the atmosphere there although I’ve been less than pleased with the customer service so far.This morning when we decided to go to breakfast, my mouth started watering for their delicious scones. They usually have 3-4 kinds available such as chocolate chip, blueberry and cranberry. I have shared these with my mom a few times and always love it with raspberry or strawberry jam and a “spot” of mint tea and honey.This morning was no different. I knew exactly what I wanted when I got there. When it was my time to order I asked the waitress to bring some jam with my scone. Her answer totally put me off and I got defensive. She said: “well, we might have some jelly, but most people want raspberry or strawberry and I’m not sure if I can find any, so you might have to have orange”.The hot prickles hit the back of my neck and I got ticked! I’m the customer after all, paying you and I don’t care if you have to run down the street to get the right jelly, I know you have it.. so FIND it!My answer surprised her. I said, “oh NO, that won’t do. I don’t eat orange. You’ll have to find me some of the other jams that I like”. (I think I even said I HATE orange... to be extra dramatic! Okay, so it's a little over the top... but I didn't WANT orange! )Long story shor

Hard Sell or Soft Sell?
It's the oldest question in the sales world - which works better, a hard or soft sales approach? The answer is... both. The skill of a truly great salesperson comes from knowing when to use which tactic - being able to shift gears from soft-sell to hard-ball, and then shifting back again, as sales relationships, dynamics of the marketplace and the many different factors that affect the sale come into play.How do you know when to shift? Here are some suggestions:Hard sell works when you have to cut through misinformation that holds up a sale. In real estate, a homeowner who hasn't seen an offer in three months is ready for the aggressive approach.A soft sell is great during the learning curve, when you're building rapport. When you are gathering information on a client's needs, budget, time frame, office politics, etc., that's the time to listen and soft-pedal the sales talk.The hard sell works when there's only one piece of the puzzle missing. Get the deal in ink, and offer a contingency clause for that one piece, whatever it may be.Try the soft sell when your client needs to feel in control of the final decision. Be willing to back away for a defined amount of time, and create a deadline that's realistic but not freewheeling, twelve or twenty-four hours. Letting them make that final decision, even when it's apparent to you and the client that it's a win-